The Machine
by sweethd
Summary: Cameron continues her mission of protecting John Connor, learning that it means more than just fighting other metals. John/Cameron set somewhere after season one.
1. His Leader's Machine

**Disclaimer – I don't own anything. **

The Machine

One: His Leader's Machine

_The rules that dictate human behavior are…_ Cameron struggles to find the correct word in her extensive vocabulary…_strange? baffling? illogical? _Derek sat across the room from her, not speaking, with an expression the machine recognized as hatred. He hated her, she knew a little of the reason, but she didn't understand why he couldn't _let it go_, as John said. She was different, not the same one who had hurt him, had hurt John. She wanted John to tell him about computers. How they could be wiped clean, and it was like having a brand new computer. She was like that – she was Cameron, with a brand new operating system, built by John for good_. I am not skynet's, I am John's. _

"I have patrolled the perimeter. There are no threats present, it is safe to sleep." She said this because it was nearing 4am and still he sat there, hours after John and Sarah had both retired. He needed a certain amount of deep sleep to function correctly and he seemed resistant to acquire it.

"There is no safety with machines." Derek states. He turns his attention to his 9mm, tracing his war worn fingers along its edges. Cameron correctly assesses that the gun brings him _comfort_.

"I" She stops, well aware that if she went bad once before it could happen again. "I trust _you_."

"You what?" Derek stared at her incredulously.

"If I become unsafe I trust you to take care of John; to protect him. Sara would hesitate, she knows John would hurt if I" She wanted to say _die_, but knew Derek did not like animal states of being attributed to her. "had to be disabled."

"I'd gladly do that now if I thought I could get away with it." He tells her, hatred shaping his words and features sharply.

"Yes." Cameron replies simply. She doesn't want to have the conversation turn to why, so she returns to the open thesaurus in her lap.

"Metals." Derek mutters as he leaves the room.

Derek sat on the edge of his bed, the gun still in his lax hand. The metal thing unnerved him. The fact that John needed it hurt. The fact that Sara allowed the metal such access pissed him off. He wondered what its presence here meant for the human it resembled in the future. The small soldier he knew, the one John loved, would it change her future? At this point in time, the human the metal was modeled after had yet to be born. He could end it here; prevent Cameron from ever being created. Yet he couldn't, as much as he hated the thing, every version seemed intertwined with his nephew.

The human had been Connor's companion. They kept it quiet, but anyone who was close to John knew. Not even the Reese boys got as close to Connor as the girl. When she was lost to them he functioned with such machine-like single mindedness it still sent chills down his spine to think of it. It happened to the best of them, going to auto-pilot after losing ones hope. It was a devastating thing to see happen to your leader.

During his imprisonment Derek had been one of the first to see Skynet's latest infiltrator technology in the form of Cameron, pre-flesh. When he escaped and found his way to Connor in search of answers he learned the following; the machine had indeed found Connor but he had only been fooled for a moment, before taking it down with a gun, a knife, and a screw driver. Connor sat and watched the machine with its chip in his hands for hours, before giving the order for it to be reprogrammed and put to work. Those in his camp were perturbed, but Connor's authority was never questioned.

Now both were here: a young Connor and an increasingly perceptive machine. He knew that both he and the machine knew more than they could tell John, and he hated having that in common.


	2. The Pacific

Two: The Pacific

The moon, full and bright, glittered on the Pacific Ocean and John watches as if hungry for every detail. This was a place of peace for him, here at the pier, he let a small part of him hope and his thoughts wander. Cameron's purposeful steps behind him however do not go unnoticed and he doesn't glance in her direction as she sits beside him. He feels her stare, can feel her wish to question, but the silence goes on until he is forced to look at her. "What?" He asks

"This is not a safe place to be alone at night." Cameron informs him.

John nods, returning his gaze to the pacific. "But you've been with me all this time. You've been with me since I left the house."

"Yes." Cameron agrees. "But you would have come here all the same."

"You're always with me." John counters, his obvious annoyance unnoticed by Cameron.

"Why do you come here? Do you like the water?" She has her eyes on him, her head tilted slightly to the left.

"I do. Do you?"

Cameron takes a moment to process the question. "I like it – it makes you calm."

He looks at her, a smile tugging at his mouth. "Does it?"

"Yes, your heartbeat is regular and your posture is 23.34% more relaxed than it is at most other times."

"This you like?" He looks at her, trying not to be taken by her beauty or the hint of humanity in her brown eyes. He sometimes had to be reminded that her care for him was nothing more than programming, _his_ programming no less.

"You are not in danger and that is calm for me." She explains. "I like this but you should be asleep. Sleep in important for you to function correctly."

John nods, not wanting to argue with her relentless logic. "This is important for me to function correctly too. I like to be here when there's nothing going on, no one getting killed, this is the way it should be all the time."

He smiles, loving the look of confusion she often had when confronted by emotion. "Then this is important for me too." She declares with certainty. "Would you be calmer if I went back to hiding?" Leaving was out of the question, but his increased heart rate did not go unnoticed.

"No," He answers gruffly, turning his attention back to the pacific. "You stay."

In the shadows, a woman watches Connor and the machine, a sick feeling rising in her throat.


	3. The Past is Present

3: The Past is Present

He didn't like to think about time travel, it blew his mind to know that it was possible, to know that he had partaken in such a deviation of nature. Or was it a deviation? Had it always existed? No one really knew who had created it and to what end. It had simply appeared, had simply come to be known. What got to him the most was the fact that both skynet and the resistance had come into it at the same time. Like some technological epiphany they had shared. But machines do not have epiphanies. They do however have infiltrators.

This was perhaps why he found himself in the Metal's room again, while it was off doing god-knows-what in the middle of the night. He stood in the center, taking in the details with out disturbing anything. Its makeup and hair brush were on the vanity, each piece aligned just so in what he took to be a colour coded system. The clothes in the open closet were arranged according to type and colour, and he wonders absently why it favored short skirts. Was it programmed to know the added power it had over human men in female form? Or had she learned this afterward? The ballet slippers, perhaps the most disturbing thing in the room, were placed with care on the floor between the dresser and closet. He picks one up and fights the urge to crush the slender thing in his hands, a piano playing somewhere far off in his mind.

He returns the slipper to its designated spot on the floor and turns his attention to the dresser. Slowly he opens one, and finds her underclothes arranged as neatly as everything else in the room. He lifts stacks of bras and panties separately, but finds nothing; likewise there is nothing in the sock drawer below. The 3rd drawer down contains the charred and bloodied remains of the outfit the machine had worn the day of John's birthday. Unlike the rest the room the clothes were in no order, they appeared to have just been shoved in, crumpled and bloody, and forgotten about. He roots around amongst the clothes and finds a familiar tool – the screwdriver John had used to take its chip.

"What are you doing?" Derek swings around, the screwdriver in hand and finds Cameron and John staring at him from the hall.

"I…uh…" _Dammit!,_ "I was checking things out. Making sure it isn't stashing the end of the world in here."

"And?" John asks, tersely. "I don't think that…" He sees the moment of John's recognition. "I don't think a _screw driver_ is what does it." He sees John's questioning eyes on Cameron, and its fleeting look of sadness.

"You should not be in my room." Cameron says, its mouth pouting but its eyes cold. "It isn't a nice thing to do."

"I'm a solider, who ever said I was nice?"

"You are damaged but you are nice" Cameron counters. "just not to me. Please leave my room."

"Derek," John motions for him to follow, before setting off down the hall. Once they are in the kitchen, John rummages through the fridge and pulls a jug of juice. He retrieves two glasses, pours, and hands one to Derek. He is reminded of John sharing his water, filtered and as clean as it could be after judgment day. "I know that you don't trust her, or my judgment of her, but this has got to stop. She's here to protect me, and aside from that one little incident," He eyes the screwdriver still in Derek's hands. "She's done a bloody good job of it."

"That little incident," He set the screw driver on the table between them. "Could have killed you, and then what? She's dangerous."

"Not to me so leave her alone." The tone of John's voice almost prompts a _yes sir_ reply from Derek.

"How are you sure? You haven't been to the future yet – you don't know what she is then."

"Whatever she was, she's not that now, and she will never be that again. We're here to change the future right? Cameron, machine or not, is mine. I sent her back for a reason and you _are not to harm her_."

Both take a few thoughtful swigs of juice. Derek wasn't appeased but if he wanted to stick around and fight along side his nephew he would have to compromise. "If you tell me that you understand the risk you're taking in keeping an unstable prototype around, and I mean _really _understand it then I'll let it go. It won't change how I feel, but I'll let it go."

John is silent for almost a minute before he speaks, "A prototype? As in the first of more to come?"

"I know of no others, but that's usually the way it goes."

"Well…lets just say the first prototype was such a dismal failure that they scrapped the whole project. That's possible right?"

"They'll take what they learn and apply it to a bigger better project. Her body, her ability to adapt, to make decisions and have opinions" at this point Derek realizes he was calling it a her, "is no small feat. The T-888 who fooled that poor woman into marrying it was something; your flesh & metal is something else."

"She doesn't act like that infiltrator." John points out.

"Assuming that's not what it's doing now, do you think it couldn't?" The truth was none of them knew what she was capable of. Her…or rather_ its_blank look was starting to look more and more contrived to him.

John shifts in his seat, facing the away from Derek. "Tell me about why you hate her, metal aside, what was it she did?"

Derek shakes his head, "I wish I could."

"Was it to you?" Derek remains silent; thankful John wasn't looking in his direction. "Me?" again Derek refuses to answer

"I have my orders – but know this; Cameron, whatever the fuck it wants to be called, is a machine. It can learn, and it can mimic, but it'll never love you. Not really. You need a human for that and I know that it's not easy. I know that your future is so frightening that you want something solid to hang on to and you'll have that one day I promise you. It's just not her."

"I know what she is." John declares, in a low and even voice. "I made her. Whatever residual programming she has, I'll take care of it." He turns and faces Derek. "I understand the risk, I do, but what isn't a risk for us? Every corner I turn around there's another machine out to kill me, and you know what? For the past year she's fought every one and I know she isn't the only one but she's the only one I don't have to feel **guilty** about."

"Because she's a machine."

"Because she's _my_machine." John corrects.

"John," Derek struggles for the words that could convince him. "I can't claim to understand your attachment to this thing, I really can't." It was a lie, he knew, he just couldn't share the truth against Connor's orders. "But you keep this," He pushes the screwdriver towards his nephew. "You keep it on you at all times. You sleep with it under your pillow and keep a loaded shotgun within arms reach – do you understand?"

"Is that an order First Lieutenant Reese?" John asks coldly.

"That's my order as your Uncle. You're the only family I have left – you get that right?"

John and Derek sit in awkward silence for what feels like an eon before John replies, "Sure, I get that."


	4. John

The Machine

4: John

School was due to start in fifteen minutes but for John and Cameron it did not matter. Cameron had no use for school, she went to accompany John and for no other reason.

John was having _an off day_ and because of that neither would be going. He sat in a trendy but too ungainly to be comfortable leather chair, sipping a cup of steaming coffee with enough sugar to kill a diabetic. Cameron was watching milk curdle in her herbal tea.

"You know – you can ask for another tea. Just show him yours." John was watching Cameron watch her tea, her perplexed expression causing both amusement and worry. "I should have warned you."

"It's lumpy." Cameron pokes at the steaming liquid with her spoon. "Like Sarah's pudding."

This gets a bit of a chuckle from John. "Yeah." He stands, and takes her cup to the barista for a fresh one. When he returns Cameron is stuffing her phone back into her school bag. "Are you _tattling_ on us? You know if she finds out you'll be in as much trouble as me."

"I called the school so that they do not call home. We can do whatever you want today but we should be home at our regular time or she will ask questions."

"Yeah?" He sits back down, staring into his mug wondering just what he was doing. "After this we're going to go for a drive."

"Where to?"

"To no place in particular." Cameron looks about to question him further but instead nods and turns her attention to her tea.

He pointedly keeps his eyes on anything but her. She was what was on his mind. He couldn't shake her. That and the whole future of his species being so determinedly set on his shoulders thing. Where did it all start? In one version of his present he went without any intrusion from the future. There had to be a first future John, one that didn't involve miss femme fatale or miss tin femme fatale. But that was impossible of course, without the future there would be no present for him. His past, present and future were simultaneous. Time travel made time itself obsolete. Right now the future was happening and changing. Or was it? Derek said it was easier not to think about it. Just fight. Any step in the direction of victory was a good one, no matter how many lives it altered or ended.

Riley was here for a reason, and though he wanted to he could not be sure that it was for the greater good. Cameron was here for a reason, but he suspected there was more to that reason than she let on. She keeps secrets. Who was she at her core? His or theirs? And if she was his, what did it mean? His future self was with holding information. His future self was a pain in the ass and quite likely very neurotic, he could feel the sprouts of it now. He could see his future in Derek, in his Mother, and in the glimpses of his future self Cameron allowed him. He was not normal.

The mug of coffee in his hands grew cold as his jumbled mess of thoughts and worries ran through his mind. Cameron sat in silence, oblivious to the male attention she attracted as she sipped her milk-free herbal tea and leafed through a local free paper. John steeled himself against his life, against what had already been done and what he knew must be done. He could not resent his lost childhood and teen years. He was the future leader of man kind. He had no time for frivolous things like friends, love, or dreams of domesticity. He was not to go forth and multiply. He was to keep the human race from extinction. He was to fight. He was not supposed to spend his night in terror, to dream nightmares so real he at times believed they were memories of his future self. He was not to allow himself the luxury of weakness. He was to fight.

"John?" Cameron asks, her brown eyes inquisitive.

"Yeah?"

"Whatever you want to do – I'll go with you. Whatever happens I'll be with you. That's what I do. I'm not…I'm not whatever your mom or Derek say I am or could be. I'm yours."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."


End file.
